Today I eat alone
by mew-tsubaki
Summary: Oneshot, slash. Daichi, Tetsurou, and the realization that you don't know what you've got until it's gone. *a smidge of language; preceded by "What shall we eat today?" but can be read on its own*


**Today I eat alone**

A Haikyuu! oneshot

by mew-tsubaki

Note: The _Haikyuu!_ characters belong to Furudate Haruichi-sensei, not to me. Um, yeah… More Kurodai angst because I'm shipper trash. :'( Read, review, and enjoy! * Note: This follows "What shall we eat today?" and will make more sense if you read that first, but I suppose this can be read on its own.

\- ^-^3

Sawamura Daichi signs the logbook. He stands up from his desk chair, shrugs off his lab coat, and tips his head to his boss on the other side of the glass. The older man can't hear him from inside his office, but he gives a little wave. Daichi musters a small smile, tucks his coat into his locker, grabs his rucksack, and leaves the university.

His university is within walking distance from his apartment, if he wants to enjoy a fifteen- to twenty-minute walk in good traffic. But most of the time he rides the train for one stop. From twenty minutes to two—that's a much better walk. Besides, it gives him the chance to check his phone for missed messages.

He has zero new messages.

All he wants is one.

That small smile from before evaporates as he takes out his keys and unlocks his front door. It's been a week and a half, but he's still not used to it yet, and he doesn't think he wants to be.

There's no "Welcome home~" awaiting him. The apartment doesn't smell delicious with dinner cooking already. Heck, the place doesn't even feel very lived in now that it's down one inhabitant.

Daichi's eyes glaze over as he trudges over to the small table in the eat-in kitchen which surprisingly feels too big now that only he sits there. He doesn't even bother to take his bag off. He just sits down, his hands loosely folded in his lap, and he lets his mind wander.

He knows it's his fault. Kuroo Tetsurou isn't the kind of guy to play the blame game, but Daichi knows it's his fault. What the hell had been wrong with him, to lose Tetsurou like this?

It's been a week and a half, but the loss is still fresh, like raw fish—the reminders are everywhere in the apartment, stinking up the place. Tetsurou's room is vacant, his stuff shipped half to Kozume's and half to Yaku's. The bathroom contains only Daichi's basic things. The fridge, Tetsurou even had joked, has no leftovers of the things he used to cook for them. Even the cupboard is eerily void of the spices and some such with which Tetsurou had experimented in his dishes.

And it's the worst, really. Daichi's appetite had finally returned after a few months of foolishness, and then Tetsurou had removed himself from the equation…frankly, he'd removed himself from the menu.

How unfair, when Daichi feels that all he wants is for Tetsurou to come home.

\- ^-^3

In the middle of the night, Daichi wakes up and throws the covers off. It's too hot for covers, too hot for someone hot-blooded like him. But…it's not as though he had really been sleeping.

No, instead, he'd been lying down with his eyes closed, wishing for sleep to come. However, his mind had jumped around between thoughts—his current experiment at work, how Tetsurou had left, what his schedule was for tomorrow, where Tetsurou was now, if Tetsurou was attempting to learn new languages, if Tetsurou would ever return to Japan.

Daichi sighs as he thinks of Bokuto's invitation for Tetsurou. Honestly…Daichi is a little jealous. Bokuto, Akaashi, and Lev had invited Tetsurou on their European tour to visit some of Lev's family and to visit an Olympian friend of Bokuto and Lev's. But, knowing Bokuto, they aren't going to stop at Europe. Tetsurou seemed fairly certain they'd even go to America for a while. So who knows when they'll be back? _If_ they'll be back?

He rubs his eyes and groans, recalling—in order—the countries to which they're going: Russia, Poland, France, England, America. Do they even know the languages? If memory serves correct, Lev still doesn't know enough Russian to save his life, despite his background. Hopefully Akaashi's English is more than passable now, and so they'll be fine.

Daichi wonders… If things had been different… If he'd surprised Tetsurou and learned a new language… If he had talked more with Tetsurou in their mother tongue… Maybe the outcome would've been different. Maybe they would still be together. Maybe Daichi would be on that European tour with them.

He closes his eyes and eventually manages to pull off something that resembles sleeping.

Maybe he should stop thinking about "what ifs" now.

\- ^-^3

When at work, he tends to forget to eat.

His coworkers will pack their lunches most of the time. Sometimes they'll go out to eat. The professor, their boss, tends to snack on the junk food he keeps hidden in his desk, despite bemoaning to his staff that his wife is on him to lose some weight.

Daichi turns his coworkers down when they invite him out. He tries to turn the professor down, too, when he offers to share a candy bar with him, but the professor is more belligerent, so sometimes Daichi caves. But when the chocolate melts on his tongue, he's not really tasting the chocolate. He's remembering Sunday mornings begun early with coffee, and the hot cocoa that sometimes followed.

Tetsurou rarely set foot in the biology lab, but now Daichi can't escape the thought of him, even there.

\- ^-^3

It's…strange, to say the least, continuing to live through the same routine as though nothing's changed.

It's been two months since they graduated from university and one month since Tetsurou left, but Daichi finds his routine isn't all that affected. He looks after the apartment. He works at the bio lab, helping the professor with research. He shops as needed. He still takes walks around town when he has a moment's respite. He could still be taking classes, working towards a different degree or a second degree, and there wouldn't be a difference.

But there are times when Daichi comes home and sets his grocery bag on the counter, the rustling of the plastic his only noisy solace, and the loneliness is just _overwhelming_. He's been alone before—he's the single child of two working parents—but he's never been _lonely_ , not like this.

The stray internal comment about his parents catches him off-guard, and he gives in to sadder thoughts. One parent's gone already, and the other is far away at home in Miyagi, happily in a different routine. His inner child wants to call up his mother and tell her everything, tell her how he's messed up, how that "lovely boy, Tetsurou" is no longer a part of his life, ask her how she's doing, ask her how she handles life, ask her how she's managed these past few years without his father, ask her how a person's supposed to forget the people that disappear from their lives.

He'd like his dad back, even for a day. He'd like for that car never to have hit him. He'd like for his life to be the way it was back before he got the call that made him reach for Tetsurou's friendship. Because perhaps that would reset things and put them properly in their place—Daichi would still have both his parents, and he'd at least still have Tetsurou's friendship. He wouldn't know loss, and he wouldn't know what he was missing by not being in love with a messy-haired man taller than him who knew his way around a kitchen.

But, unfortunately, that's not the case, and he doesn't call his mother. He leaves the plastic-wrapped onigiri in the grocery bag on the counter and unwraps the Garigari-kun popsicle, hoping that maybe the frozen treat might do more than numb his lips. He closes his eyes, but the ice doesn't help.

The loss of a family member is like having a piece of your past fade away.

The loss of love is like having an absent limb.

\- ^-^3

His phone buzzes. At that, his pulse quickens, and he hastily sits up on the couch in the living room, throwing the newspaper from his chest which had fallen on him like a blanket when he'd dozed off. Daichi grabs his phone from the small coffee table and clutches it. But the screen gives him only disappointment.

He twists his mouth around, not quite frowning and not answering the text from Suga. He stands, walks around the apartment for a bit, glances at his phone twice, groans, and heads into his room to change out of his pajamas.

Ten minutes later, he walks into the café where Suga is and sits beside him at the bar top by the window. "Hey," he says.

Suga, cheerful as ever and perceptive as ever, eyes Daichi. "You know, you didn't _have_ to come. And, uh, don't try or anything, Daichi," he adds, stifling a snicker at his friend's sweats. It may be summer, but it's not too hot today, so Daichi can manage.

Daichi rolls his eyes. "You contacted _me_ ," he reminds the setter.

"Well, yeah. I thought we were turning this into a thing, getting together when Tobio shows off for the scouts." Suga sips some multicolored drink and pushes a lock of hair behind his ear and begins talking about which teams want Kageyama these days, because it looks as though Kageyama's not going to finish school if the right offer comes, and Suga's going to follow him because that's what loyal significant others do.

For Daichi, listening to Suga chatter about his own happiness is painful only for one reason these days, because it serves as a reminder of what feels like an empty apartment. But months ago, when Suga first got back in touch with him after so long, Daichi knows meeting with Suga hurt for other reasons, too.

Once upon a time, Daichi would've been distracted by Suga's little motions, like the way his smile makes his beauty mark move, or the way his hair pushed behind one ear looks like an invitation. And that once upon a time wasn't even that long ago…

Suga prattles on, and Daichi sweats not from the summertime heat but from shame. It feels hard to believe that, as comfortable as he was with Tetsurou, one call from Suga was all it took to stir up old feelings from high school and throw him into confusion earlier this year. It was enough to haunt his dreams with thoughts he'd had as captain about his vice-captain. But seeing Suga a couple of more times, never saying a word to Tetsurou, had cleared it up for Daichi, especially when his dreams morphed Suga into a lanky man with narrow but pretty eyes, one of which is always half-hidden by inky hair.

Suga wasn't the problem and isn't the problem, but Daichi knows he realized this too late.

Daichi clears his throat when he catches Suga staring, giving him an annoyed look. "Ah, sorry, sorry… What did I miss?"

"Honestly, Daichi, you go off into your own little world at times…" The pretty man cups his cheek in his palm and leans on the counter. "And you're so quiet today. Dressing like a slob, being quiet, staring off into space—what's gotten into you?"

Ah, where to start? Daichi runs his hand through his hair, back to front, and shakes his head. "It's nothing," he fibs. It's his first lie in a long time, and some dark part of him is happy it's handed to someone other than Tetsurou. Maybe Daichi messed up their relationship, but he never lied to the other man.

Suga shakes his head. "Daichi, you're my friend. My _best_ friend. My oldest friend. I can read you like a book, even with your cover closed."

But that's just the thing. Suga can do that, and so can Shimizu, and so can Tetsurou. But Tetsurou's the only one he wants doing that anymore, and that's simply not happening. "Say hi to Kageyama for me," Daichi says with half a grin, leaving money on the counter even though he ordered nothing for himself.

Being around happy people is too much to bear when you can't fool yourself with your own smile.

\- ^-^3

One Sunday morning he wakes up and realizes the apartment needs new paint.

How he'd not noticed before, he has no clue. But the pale, dull yellow came this way and they never did anything about it when they first got the place last fall, after deciding to move in together when their old dorm building was no longer an option because of a fumigation order. On the ceiling, the paint is flecking in two places, so Daichi can tell it's old.

He gets permission from the landlady to repaint. Then he goes to the store and looks at color swatches. Pale red is better than pale yellow, he decides.

The apartment is small, very cozy for two people, but the job still seems pretty big when it comes to painting. Daichi scrolls through the short list of contacts on his phone. He can't call Suga—Suga and Kageyama returned to the north after the scouts saw Kageyama and told him they'd call him back, so Kageyama still hasn't signed with a pro team yet, and Daichi's not going to make Suga come down here just to help him repaint the apartment. Asahi's not local, either, and who knows where Shimizu is? Ikejiri moved back to Miyagi after university, and the others…

Daichi looks at those names. Kozume. Yaku. Kai. Lev. They're his friends, but they were Tetsurou's first. Out of that short list, he stands the best chance with Kai, because he and Kai get along in a quiet manner, and Kai was teaching him how to play Go the last time they all got together. But it doesn't feel right, calling him up for such an absurd reason, and Lev's on that blasted trip anyway. And, frankly, Daichi's a little scared of calling Kozume or Yaku, considering they're closest to Tetsurou aside from Daichi.

So Daichi cracks open the windows after buying the paint, and he does the job himself. It doesn't look too bad, the faintly salmon hue, especially with sunlight bouncing off the walls. Catching his reflection in the window's glass, he observes the reflected color makes him look alive.

He tries not to think about such a warm color wrapping around people no longer there.

\- ^-^3

A postcard comes, from France.

It's just a picture of cobblestone streets meeting at an intersection, emerging from the romanticism of dim lighting in the early evening. The storefronts are pretty, the script on signs gorgeous. Everything about the picture makes Daichi want to walk down the street, just to enjoy life for a second without worrying about everything happening in reality.

On the back, Tetsurou simply signed his name. It's there, nice and neat kanji beneath wobbly cursive. He's trying to learn the Roman alphabet, which actually makes the corners of Daichi's mouth inch upward.

\- ^-^3

The following week, late if one looks at the postmarks, two more postcards come. One from Russia and one from Poland.

Tetsurou first tried his hand at Cyrillic, it seems, but Daichi wouldn't know that if not for those familiar kanji written at the bottom every time.

He also tries not to get his hopes up that, with that first postcard from France, perhaps the journey's almost over. If anything, he just hopes Tetsurou is enjoying himself. In that way, Daichi thinks maybe things can get better.

Maybe he can let go, too.

\- ^-^3

But then the England postcard arrives at the end of August, and Daichi begins tacking them up on the fridge. They look like a roadmap of sorts, as though he's the one making plans and choosing his dream destinations.

He's conscious of this, and it worries him. Oh no, he thinks. What if this isn't letting go? What if this is even worse and is the opposite, is him falling even harder?

As if some higher power is screwing with him, his phone rings. It's Kozume. "Sawamura-san."

"Ah, hey, Kozume… How are you?"

There's silence on the other end of the line. Daichi can picture the guy nodding at his phone with eyes averted. "I, um…wanted to see…how you…"

He can't imagine Tetsurou going through Kozume, of all people, to check up on him. So Daichi can only imagine that Suga called Hinata, who mentioned it to his roommate, and said roommate was now making an attempt at being friendly to Daichi instead of just playing the role of Tetsurou's childhood friend. "I'm fine," he lies, and he wonders how much easier it will get, lying to people as time goes by.

"Un." Another quiet pause. "So Kuroo…?"

What? Daichi doesn't know what he's after. Maybe about the postcards? "I've barely heard from him. He's sent postcards from where they've been, that's all."

Then, without any trepidation—"And you're all right with that?"

Well… Truth be told, Daichi hasn't given it that much thought. "What do you mean?" he inquires inaudibly.

Kozume sighs some on his end. "Kuroo said he'd talk to you before he left. He wasn't happy, you know."

"…no. I know."

The setter's stubborn side just begins to rear its ugly head. "But how much did you know? Kuroo pretends at being an easygoing person, but he gets hurt, just like anyone else." He takes a breath, even though his scolding is little more than just him bitching at Daichi. "How…how could you not take care of that person, if he means anything to you?"

Daichi also sighs. "I didn't doubt him or know I hurt him, Kozume. I was doubting myself." And the syllables, the words, the truths fall from his mouth, and it's like solving an equation right before passing in the test. What was once blank paper before him is suddenly covered in writing, and instinctively he knows he's right. That hurts more than Kozume calling him up to guilt-trip him.

Kozume "hmms" into the receiver. "You really didn't mean to hurt Kuroo?"

"He said he still loved me, before he left," Daichi replies, telling someone some of what had happened for the first time. "He didn't know in what way, but he still loved me. I knew before then, though, that I still love him, too, in that I want to be with him. But too late now."

The setter says nothing, which is the best reaction for which Daichi could hope.

"I… I know it probably wasn't your intention, but thank you for letting me vent a little. Just—just don't tell Tetsurou, okay?" Yeah, he doesn't really want Tetsurou to know and to come crawling back out of pity. Daichi doesn't like to be pitied, and Tetsurou's better than that.

The phone call ends, and Daichi stares back at the roadmap on the fridge.

The following day, the walls and ceiling are back to pale, dull, comforting yellow.

\- ^-^3

September comes and goes, and Daichi wonders when he'll get a postcard from America, but it never comes. So he stops dreaming, and he stops hoping, and he starts to feel like a kid who's finally learned to swim and can breathe properly again.

Every now and then, he toys with the idea of advertising for the vacant room in the apartment, but he never does it, even on those days when he comes _very_ close to putting an ad in the paper or posting online about it. It's not as though he's worried about the cost of the rent—Tetsurou paid for half a year's worth of his share in advance before he left, so as not to put Daichi through more than was necessary.

In October, it occurs to Daichi that he's been in that apartment for over a year now, and he's struck by a wave of that loneliness again. But instead of drowning in that wave, he embraces it and thinks that, perhaps, everything happens for a reason.

After all, the university had been his father's alma mater. Daichi and Tetsurou had been roommates by chance, but then they got to know each other, and they'd developed a friendship aside from their respect for each other as former captains.

Then his father had died, and Daichi's world no longer looked sturdy. The outline of everything was shaky, and he'd chosen to depend on someone who'd surprised even him—Tetsurou. Not Suga or Asahi, but Tetsurou. It was the first time Daichi had cried so openly in front of anyone, and Tetsurou had supported him and comforted him unlike any way Daichi imagined anyone could for another.

And that was their starting point.

Sure, there had been casual flirtations before because that was just Tetsurou's teasing personality. And Daichi would be lying if he said Tetsurou was an unattractive fellow. But Daichi hadn't shared all of himself with anyone else before, and it was amazing and freeing—

 _—and terrifying._

So terrifying. So much, in fact, that Daichi tried to slow things down as they heated up between the two men. And after the umpteenth time of waking up with Tetsurou's head on his shoulder and arms wrapped around his waist, Daichi had understood the deepest, darkest of fears:

Because what else do you give someone after you've given them all of yourself?

That was it. That was the turning point, the cool-down point. It wasn't Daichi's confusion about Sugawara Koushi waltzing back into his life. It was his _own self-doubt_. He really had told Kozume the truth.

Daichi doesn't want the old days back, he now knows. He wants Tetsurou back, and he wants a clean slate. He wants to look across the room, in a bar or a restaurant or maybe one of those sultry little French cafés, and meet a handsome stranger's eyes. He wants to roll his eyes at the man's horrible use of a pick-up line on Daichi. He wants to ignore the pick-up line and buy _him_ a drink, and he wants to talk about asinine things with this guy who looks like a tomcat but is a kitten in disguise.

He wants to fall in love with Kuroo Tetsurou again.

And if he falls into his old ways again, spacing out too much and not paying Tetsurou enough attention, Daichi wants Tetsurou to call him out on his bullshit. If Daichi lacks an appetite like before, he wants Tetsurou to sit him down and force-feed him and make him talk about whatever's on his mind. Because he wants to eat Tetsurou's ramen again. He wants to cuddle up on cold nights with Tetsurou again, with the cat bringing his own blanket in addition to wrapping his arms around Daichi since Daichi has always run hotter out of the two of them. He wants Tetsurou again, but maybe that hadn't been clear to the other man before—

He _still_ wants Tetsurou, and no one can say otherwise.

\- ^-^3

Sharp, clear eyes are now just a pleasant reverie for Daichi as November comes to a close. An American postcard never arrives, Kozume doesn't check up on him again, and Kageyama lands a starting spot with one of the pro league teams in Tokyo, so Suga and he will move and be closer by, but Daichi doesn't think he's going to visit as often as Suga would like.

He never takes out an ad in the paper, nor does he post online. But Daichi draws a quick poster on a sheet of printer paper and tapes it to the front door. It hangs there and is the first thing he sees when he leaves in the morning and comes home at night. Sometimes it falls down, but Daichi has plenty of tape, and he rehangs it every single time.

He learns to cook better things, too, meals that require more than just the microwave or boiled water. It's not Tetsurou's cooking, but it beats store-bought onigiri and bento, so Daichi pats himself on the back for it.

And he calls his mother. He tells her what happened, and he answers all of her questions, because a few were bound to come up when he divulges exactly how close he and his roommate had been. And he gets to ask her some things, too, and it's nice. It's nice to know that, no matter what the age, a man will always be his mother's son.

Finally, the apartment doesn't feel so big and empty anymore. Daichi can read the newspaper on Sunday mornings while drinking black coffee and sitting in the middle of the couch without the need to make room for another person. He can spread out his things in the bathroom without having to make room for someone else's haircare products. He can go into the second bedroom to size it up for potential new roommates without feeling wet prickling at the backs of his eyes. He can sleep however he wants to in his own bed, wearing only a thin blanket without someone griping loudly about how couldn't he be cold with only that blanket in Japan in November. He can eat alone at that tiny table in the kitchen/dining area and not feel lonely.

Daichi tries his hand at some grilled fish, even though it's stinky and, frankly, a bit salty for his tastes, but it's brain food. And he's a researcher, in a biology lab. Considering how he's starved himself these past several months, he figures he ought to cut his brain some slack and feed it.

He plates everything and wipes down the counter so he won't have too much of a mess to clean up later. He sits down and almost digs in when he forgets his drink. So he hops up and grabs a bottle of light beer, opens it, and almost sits back down when there's a knock on the door.

Well, about time someone took notice of his flyer, really.

Daichi rolls his eyes but hopes he has a real taker, so he puts the beer on the table and walks over to the door. The person on the other side slides the flyer underneath the door. Weird, they didn't have to do that. Daichi bends down and picks it up, but there's something underneath the flyer.

It's a photo of a bridge. Wait, wait, that bridge is famous… It's red-painted steel, but it's—it's the Golden Gate Bridge. An American bridge.

There's nothing but the sound of his heart thudding in his chest as he picks it up and realizes the photo's a postcard, so he turns it around. It's blank, unsigned, and not even addressed to Daichi.

But the sender knocks again, two raps on the door, and Daichi could care less about the barren sea of white opposite the bridge.

\- ^-^3

 **:3 This was actually not as easy to write as "What shall we eat today?" but, man, it goes me thinking about a lot of real, serious, heavy topics. 0.0 Again, inspired a little by Yoshinaga Fumi's** _ **Kinou Nani Tabeta? (What Did You Eat Yesterday?)**_ **and Ono Natsume's** _ **Gente**_ **, as well as some Jpop and Kpop songs (mostly stuff by Primary). I ended it there because even I'm still uncertain if I believe that, in this scenario, they should give it another shot. So maybe it's Kuroo, maybe it's someone new—that's up to you, the reader. Though I confess I have this hilarious image in my mind of Daichi opening the door and Kuroo cursing about how hellish the airport was since the story technically ends at the time of American Thanksgiving. XD And Daichi confused about his feelings for Suga…well, who** _ **hasn't**_ **fallen for Suga at some point? (Also Kagesuga happened just because, although kind of because of the Kenhina in "What shall we eat today?" but also because *spoiler alert* I tend to forget that Kagesuga was actually my 1** **st** _ **HQ!**_ **OTP, weirdly enough, and I'm still fond of them.) But, no, Daichi loves Tetsurou, and I think they're an interesting pair. I just kind of want to see someone's art interpreting what Akaashi, Bokuto, Kuroo, and Lev going to those five countries might look like… *lol* So yeah. *end babbling***

 **Thank you very much for reading this, and please review! Check out my other fics, too, if you liked this! And deffo read "What shall we eat today?" if you didn't before reading this. Kuroo's POV…*le whoa* *the feels***

 **-mew-tsubaki :}**


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